HNS Board approves new benefits package for teachers

HARTINGTON — Hartington-Newcastle teachers will get a raise and an improved benefit package next school year, School Board members decided Monday night. After several meetings between the school board negotiations committee and the Hartington-Newcastle Education Association, both groups agreed Monday on pay raises and a new benefit package. The Board voted unanimously to raise salaries by 1.9 percent. This means the base pay of new teachers will be increased by $700 to $36,800 annually. The new negotiated agreement also includes a revamped health insurance package. All newly hired teachers will now have 100 percent of a single person’s insurance covered by the school. If a teacher is on a family health insurance plan, they will now have 90 percent of the premium covered by the school district. Currently, the school uses a cafeteria plan where teachers get a stipend, which they can use for health insurance, retirement or however they see fit. All existing teachers will have the option to either keep their current cafeteria plan, or take the new policy. The school’s current health insurance plan is no longer competitive with area schools and needs to change, Supt. A.J. Johnson told School Board members Monday. “With the rising cost of insurance, what we could offer in the cafeteria plan compared to what someone needed for insurance — that gap just kept getting wider and wider,” Johnson said. “We were concerned about losing teachers because they could go to another school and get a better package.” Current teachers will get to choose whether they want to continue under the old health insurance plan or go with the new package, Supt. Johnson said. Supt. Johnson said the new benefit package was needed in order to bring in and keep quality teachers. “With the cost of health care insurance being such a major concern for so many people, we realized there was a real necessity for doing this,” he said. “It was getting to be that for anyone with a family, it was becoming prohibitive for them to come here.”